CD REVIEW, March 1990

RONSTADT'S RAINSTORM OF EMOTION
by Holly Gleason

Linda Ronstadt enters the press room at a trade magazine's office in Los Angeles with her five-person
entourage, and immediately manages to find familiar territory in a roomful of strangers. She chats
up retailers, fans, and critics on their own terms and leaves each of them feeling like they've
shared common ground. As one of America's most famous and enduring female pop vocalists, Ronstadt
understands what people are made of and how to hit their emotional bull's-eye every time, whether
it's through light and sprightly talk, probing interviews, or songs invested with the depth of her experiences.

Recordings such as Heart Like a Wheel, Don't Cry Now, Hasten Down the Wind,
Prisoner in Disguise, and Livin' in the U.S.A. established Ronstadt as America's rock'n'roll
sweetheart. Later forays into new wave (Mad Love), American jazz standards (three recordings with
Nelson Riddle), and Mexican mariachi (Canciones de mi Padre) pushed pop's limits and broadened
our musical horizons.

Now Ronstadt has returned to pop with a mature release that recalls why and how we all fell in love
with the voice that embodies all the raw, aching emotions and vulnerabilities of a broken heart. Cry Like
a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind features a collection of songs from some of America's best songwriters,
including Karla Bonoff ("Trouble Again"), Jimmy Webb ("Adios," "Still Within the Sound of My Voice"), and the
team of Paul Carrack/Nick Lowe/Martin Belmont ("I Need You"). The disc also boasts New Orleans' silk-voiced
Aaron Neville on four duets; Brian Wilson singing backup harmonies on "Adios"; the Tower of Power horn section
on "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby"; and the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, a group of musicians from
northern California.

Ronstadt recently spoke to CDR to discuss the making of the album.

CDR:It's nice hearing you sing pop again.

Linda Ronstadt: I enjoyed making Cry Like a Rainstorm. I got to work with a lot of my favorite
people, and I got to meet some new people. The Tower of Power horn section- I'd always wanted to work
with them. And Brian Wilson- he came into the studio and sang 15 parts for "Adios"! I was just
flabbergasted. Brian's really a vocal orchestrator. There isn't anybody else in pop music with that kind
of talent. He just comes in and puts the parts down, one right after another- real close, intricate harmony
parts. I was astounded.

CDR:How did you two get hooked up?

Ronstadt: I knew him years ago. I think we met at the Troubadour and became friends. He lived not
too far from me, when I was living above the Sunset Strip. He used to come knock on my door on a regular
basis, usually on the way to the health food store- I think everybody was drinking grape juice in those days.
Sometimes he'd be short of money and he'd come to my back door and say, "I need to borrow 18 cents." He'd get
a couple bottles of grape juice and come back and we'd drink it together. He wasn't living at home at that
point and he was having a hard time adjusting to things like doing his laundry. We'd go sit in the laundromat
and watch the clothes go 'round and talk about rock'n'roll. I was hoping he'd remember those times as fondly
as I did- and he does.

CDR:Aaron Neville also played a big part on the album.

Ronstadt: He's just the guy every singer wants to sing with. When I went to New Orleans a few years
ago with Nelson Riddle and my jazz band, the first thing we wanted to do, naturally, was find the Neville
Brothers. When we found out where they were playing, Aaron was on stage singing. I had no idea he even
knew who I was, but he invited me up. Normally I don't like to do those kind of things because I like to
rehearse, but I just couldn't resist.

So I was up there singing doo-wop songs with him, and because we sing in kind of the same key, I thought
we sounded good together. Then I thought, "Of course you sound good with him. Every singer thinks he
sounds good singing with Aaron Neville. A typist would come away thinking that it was a perfect duet."

I was surprised and delighted when he called and asked if I'd like to come sing with him on the New Orleans
Against the Hungry and Homeless benefit he does every year. I ran right back there and the first song we worked
up, because we knew all the words, was Schubert's "Ave Maria." Something I'd always wanted to sing was
"When Something's Wrong with My Baby," so we worked that out. That was the beginning, the seed of our duet.
But it took me a while to work up my nerve to ask him to record with me. There was a lot of hand wringing
and sweating involved. But he said yes right away, and I was thrilled.

We kept in close contact for the next two or three years and suggested songs back and forth. It's
amazing how long projects take from the idea to actually having the package in hand. I get an idea and think,
"Oh, I'm going to do that tomorrow," but I don't get to it for two or three years.

CDR:Is preparing for a record more involved than making it?

Ronstadt: Let me answer that with an example. People ask me, "What do you listen to on the radio?"
Well, I don't listen to the radio. I listen to composite cassette tapes of whatever I'm trying to learn at
the time. For three years, I listened to nothing but Mexican music, whether I was driving around in my car
or taking a bath. I really steeped myself in it. Of course, I'd grown up with it, too. I could sing it
as an amateur, but I couldn't sing it as a professional until I worked on it.

The thing that prepared me for working with Aaron was singing with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
Dolly's got that kind of Appalachian authenticity to her style...

CDR:That purity...

Ronstadt: That's as pure as it gets. Emmy and I have always been kind of in awe of her, so to try
and learn to sing with her, to try and emulate it, is like being on a rollercoaster, because you're just kind
of going along with her. It's exhilarating because you get to experience the music almost from inside her soul.
It's like looking out at the music through her eyes.

I did things vocally with Dolly that I could never do on my own. I could never sing a song like Dolly does,
because the kind of vocal embellishment she does doesn't come naturally to me. But I can shadow it and ride
along with her-- outline and embellish her voice.

It was the same thing with Aaron. I learned to do a lot of things with him I wouldn't have ever been able
to do myself, because I'm not a New Orleans singer, and I'm certainly not an R&B singer. I grew up in
Tucson, AZ, and I'm the product of a very random musical environment, basically because of the radio.

We lived where you could get station XERF in Del Rio, TX. They played every kind of music there was.
I got all the country and bluegrass music, all the gospel, all the rock'n'roll... But at home, I got Gilbert &
Sullivan, Mexican music, opera, and American jazz standards. So all that was really authentic to my musical
base. Yet people always say, "Well, you're doing something new again." Actually, I'm not; I'm doing something old!

As a singer, I came to rock'n'roll relatively late in life. I didn't start hearing rock on the radio until I
was 7, and I didn't start trying to sing it till I was a teenager- and a late teenager at that. I was also trying
to sing folk music, and I was listening to bluegrass and Bill Monroe, and I just loved it. My brother and sister
and I would try to sing those harmonies, and we'd also try to sing three-part Mexican harmonies.

CDR:You do a lot of Jimmy Webb songs on this record.

Ronstadt: His stuff consistently has been recorded by good artists. Certainly you can't get a a higher
compliment than having someone like Ray Charles recording your work. But Jimmy has been overlooked. I think it's
that "hip" thing- that glib Rolling Stone reductionist attitude that's done no good to pop music. In fact,
it's done a great deal of harm in terms of making people self-conscious about their music and about other people's
opinions, because [Rolling Stone's critics] write from such an insecure vantage point. It's that kind of
attitude that tends to discount the things Jimmy's done, which aren't very trendy. He's real sensitive because he
took a lot of battering in the '60s, when that hipper-than-thou thing was going on. Meanwhile, all these artists
were admiring Jimmy's music. Get Don Henley and J.D. Souther and Jackson Browne in the corner of the El Adobe Cafe
and they'd be talking about what a great songwriter Jimmy Webb is and how they wish they had the guts to write
a song that rhymes "adios," "morose," and "grandiose."

Anyway, these were songs I'd had around for a long time. They were like a dog on my heels. I'd listen to them
over and over and over again, but I didn't have the confidence to address them. After I got through singing with
Dolly and Emmy, and doing Mexican music, I felt like maybe I could take on those Jimmy Webb songs.

In fact, I really went to "phrasing school" for this album. If I didn't know something, I just asked somebody
who did. For "Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind," a song I've known for a long time, I just got overwhelmed.
I called [Little Feat's] Craig Fuller and said, "Look, you really know how to sing this. Come and help me." He came
into the studio, and we went through track after track of vocals and listened to different interpretations. We sat
at the piano and by the time we went through it again and again, I had a road map and knew how to get through it.

CDR:How'd you come to the Paul Carrack material?

Ronstadt: Danny Ferrington, my roommate- and a wonderful guitar maker- loves Paul Carrack's songs.
He just kept bugging me about him for such a long time that I finally took his word for it. "I Need You" was a song
I'd suggested for Smokey Robinson because he wanted to do a duet with me, but he just didn't hear it. So I kept
it on hold because I knew it would be a great duet some day.

CDR:It's probably difficult to define, but what is making music all about for you?

Ronstadt: Music is aural dreaming. You're dreaming in sound- and the function that art serves for me
is to make order out of chaos, to make sense out of life. Life is relentless; it's often senseless and painful.
Music provides us with these certain classic patterns that repeat and evolve and reorganize themselves on an infinite scale.
And that's what I use it for.

If you sit down and say, "I'm going to make a hit record," you can't do it. Music should unscramble those emotions
of "Someone hurt my feelings," or "Someone made me feel good," or "I was hoping for this but I got disappointed."
It can be very restoring, renewing, and life-giving. Therein lies the secret of its spiritual nature. I'm not religious- that
may be the understatement of the century. But I feel like I'm spiritual because I sing- not that you have to sing to be spiritual.
What music proves to me beyond any shadow of a doubt is that we all have a spiritual side to us. We all have the ability to
have those feelings evoked within us.

RETROSPECTIVERONSTADT: DIVA OF DIVERSITY
by Holly Gleason

Linda Ronstadt's recording career started with a '60s band called the Stone Poneys, notable mainly for its cover of
Michael Nesmith's "Different Drum." In the early '70s, Ronstadt launched her solo career, starting as a folk/rock singer
before shifting into country/rock. By the end of the '70s, with a string of Top 40 hits to her credit, she had moved more
into straight pop, while in the '80s, she experimented with several new styles- from new wave to American jazz standards
to straight country and back to pop/rock. Here are reviews and ratings of her complete CD catalog.

In many ways, Heart was Linda Ronstadt's breatkthrough release, thanks to "You're No Good," Little Feat's "Willin'," Kate
and Anna McGarrigle's title track, and Hank Williams' "I Can't Help It If I'm Still in Love with You." The album perfects the
country/rock blend Ronstadt had been developing during her post-Stone Poney's tenure at Capitol.

WIth its expansive rock stylings combined with country embellishments, this disc stands as a prototype California rock album.
The sound is clean, and there's a heart-on-the-sleeve quality that's as charmingly naive as it is honest.

It's the ballads on Don't Cry Now- Ronstadt's first Elektra/Asylum release- that show off her robust, sad voice.
At times the production sounds dated, but there's a timelessness in the way she sings Eric Kaz's "Love Has No Pride,"
Randy Newman's "Sail Away," and Neil Young's "I Believe in You." "Silver Threads and Golden Needles," with its reeling
fiddle, has become a modern country staple, and her take on the Eagles' "Desperado" is far more plaintive and pleading than
the original. On Rick Roberts' "Colorado," the heartbreak testimonial becomes overwhelming, wrapping listeners in the song's
inherent grief while establishing Ronstadt as a vocalist who can plumb emotion's depths.

More country than rock, Prisoner opens with a twanging banjo and slithering fiddle on Neil Young's "Love is a Rose."
The mood continues through James Taylor's "Hey Mister, That's Me Up on the Jukebox," Lowell George's "Roll Um Easy," Dolly
Parton's "I Will Always Love You," and the traditional "The Sweetest Gift," featuring Emmylou Harris.

Prisoner also finds Ronstadt beginning to expand her horizons. She covers Jimmy Cliff's Rasta classic "Many Rivers to Cross,"
Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears," and Martha & the Vandellas "Heat Wave," the latter receiving a particularly fiery
treatment. Her performance of J.D. Souther's title track, a gentle ballad about running from love, is particularly fine.

Ronstadt's first ambitious-sounding record, Hasten relegates her country roots to a minor role. Instead, the disc
contains great pop songs from Karla Bonoff ("Lose Again," the spare "Someone to Lay Down Beside Me," "If He's Ever Near"),
Ry Cooder ("The Tattler"), and Warren Zevon (the title track). There's also a slice of reggae ("Rivers of Babylon," "Give One Heart"),
a taste of country (the torch classic "Crazy"), a bit of gut-scraping blues, and a Buddy Holly remake ("That'll Be the Day").

Ronstadt's first greatest hits package surveys her country/rock period, consisting of music she created with acts such
as the Eagles, Poco, and Jackson Browne. It's rare for Ronstadt to receive her share of credit for making the singer/songwriter
movement popular. But songs such as "You're No Good," "That'll Be the Day," "Love Has No Pride," "Heat Wave," and "When Will I Be Loved"
prove that her aim is true. As an overview, Greatest Hits is stellar.

Simple Dreams is the album that made Ronstadt a pop superstar, primarily because of the inescapable hit treatment
of Roy Orbison's "Blue Bayou." Her seductive comination of sultriness and vulerability propel such tracks as Warren Zevon's
"Carmelita" and "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," the Stones' "Tumbling Dice," Buddy Holly's "It's So Easy," and the traditional ballads
"I Never Will Marry" and "Old Paint." A bit more quaint and less sophisticated than Hasten Down the Wind, Simple
Dreams shows Ronstadt building momentum and becoming more vocally astute.

Of all of Ronstadt's '70s releases, Living sounds the most dated. The transistorized electric guitar on the title track
is small and tinny, and the piano seems strangely metallic. The veneer begins to wear thin after repeated listenings. Yet Living
isn't a total write-off, as great songwriting nearly saves the disc. The standout track is J.D. Souther's quite, longing
"White Rhythm & Blues," and overlooked jewel of vulnerability and desire tempered with resolve. Ronstadt also gives
enticing performances on Eric Kaz's "Blowing Away" and Elvis Costello's "Alison" (though at times her take on the latter is overblown).

Greatest Hits Vol. 2 shows Ronstadt more confident with her place in pop music and her abilities as a singer.
Consequently, the sweep of material is much greater. From the wide-open heartbreak of "Blue Bayou" to the under-her-thumb
insistence of "How Do I Make You," Ronstadt is in control. Though Vol. 2 contains some of her biggest hits,
the best of Ronstadt's most subtle and moving work remains buried on her full-length albums.

On Mad Love, Ronstadt takes a voyage into the combustible world of new wave. The album's edginess and utter feistiness
surprised many listeners, even though the performances aren't all that risky. Her reading of Elvis Costello's "Party Girl"
is slow, sad, and pleading, while she's more acidic on his "Girls Talk." The whirling "How Do I Make You" is far more frenetic
than standard Ronstadt singles, while "Justine" finds the dark-haired songstress digging in and hitting hard.

On Get Closer, Ronstadt returned to the cut-and-paste approach of making an album. There's a new confidence
to the way she attacks the songs, however, as she exhorts furiously on the title track, tackles the haunting Appalachian-feeling
"Mr. Radio," caresses Jimmy Webb's "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress," and churns out the hyperspeed "Lies."

James Taylor checks in for a duet on the R&B chestnut "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine," while Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris
chime in on "My Blue Tears." In between, there's something for everyone. Unfortunately, people weren't really buying it
in 1982, so Get Closer was unjustly overlooked.

During the course of four years, Ronstadt recorded three albums of American jazz standards under the guiding hand
of Nelson Riddle and his orchestra. It was a move that stood in sharp contrast to her heretofore acute pop
sensibilities. Yet her fans bought the albums in droves- discovering a whole new sector of music in the process.

Drawing on classic composers/lyricists such as the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart, Hoagy Carmichael,
Nat King Cole, and even Thelonious Monk, Ronstadt revitalized classic songs of the big band era, from the romantic
"Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" and the aching "What'll I Do" to the ironic, heart-pulling "My Funny Valentine."
While Ronstadt's interpretations occasionally sound a bit wooden, her love of the material more than carries her
through the rough spots.

Note: These three recordings are also available on a two-disc set titled 'Round Midnight.

Trio serves as a distaff holy trinity of traditional country music. Appalachian melodies, bluegrass arrangements,
and traditional songs dot this summit meeting between three of contemporary music's most vital yet disparate sources.
If "To Know Him Is to Love Him" is a bit cloying, the rest of the album is an austere gem that strips away all the unnecessary
sludge caking up most modern country. It's direct and to the point, and there's nothing like the trio's high, lonesome
harmonies on Jean Ritchie's "My Dear Companion" or Alan O'Bryant's "Those Memories of You."

Ronstadt's tribute to her Mexican roots and heritage celebrates the mariachi music that she knew growing up.
Joined by several of Mexico's leading bands, Ronstadt's performance on this lusty 13-song disc is the result of exhaustive
work and research into a musical tradition. Canciones is filled with pure, carnal enjoyment of good music, good
friends, and whatever else goes along with it. While the songs are sung in Spanish, the liner notes contain translations
and notes about their origins. With the current vanguard of world music, Canciones serves as an excellent primer
for regional Mexican melodies.

After a seven-year wanderlust, Ronstadt returns to pop much stronger and more focused. Her chemistry
with Aaron Neville is showcased in this set of mature pop songs (see full review in CDR 1/90, p. 80).